


Chain Me in a Box in the River

by whoistorule



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whoistorule/pseuds/whoistorule
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert's Rebellion <i>Harry Potter</i> AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Before the War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bronson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bronson/gifts).



**PART I | Before the War**

It should have come as more of a shock when the letter came in the mail, delivered by some sort of brown owl no less, the parchment rich and creamy beneath his father's working class fingers, but Davos was never much given to shock.  Besides, it made sense.  Weird things had always seemed to happen around Davos.  Whenever he wanted to go unnoticed, whenever he had something to hide, the world just seemed to bend darkness around him.  He'd never had much trouble nicking candy bars and the like, not like the other boys who'd get caught, their fingers leaving sticky marks on the bills they conjured from their parents pockets. To Davos, that was the real magic, the kind that came in stacks from the bank, pressed shiny and bright with the face of a queen.

His mother had been shocked, his father had sighed and asked the cost, and Davos had merely shrugged in response.  They'd given him an address, a pub in London, and some odd silver and bronze coins of his own, and he'd accepted them with the same curious calm with which he'd greeted the letter.  That was the trick of it, wasn't it?  His parents had been surprised, because what use would his shadows have been if his mother could sweep them away with a brush of her hand.

If this mysterious school was the price he would pay for the ease life gave him, he'd pay it with grim cheer, it was only fair after all.

\--

His parents didn't drop him at the train.  There wasn't a point, not really, they'd just lose a day of work, and at eleven, Davos was more than capable of navigating the London Underground.  He'd lugged his heavy trunk, used, of course, through the rising tides of the morning rush, navigating effortlessly through the ebbs and flows.  The platform door had been tricky at first, but in the end all he'd had to do was watch.  Watch as a regal, imperious woman with a baby pram and her equally commanding husband had walked nonchalantly through the barrier wall.  The pair was dripping with the sort of authority only old money could buy, it clasped round their wrists and clung to the gold that encircled their necks.  The couple was followed by a boisterous teenaged boy, his black hair gleaming in the low light.  His laugh boomed as he dragged a smaller, stockier boy that could only be his brother in after him.  "C'mon Stannis," Davos could hear him roar, "Only muggles and mudbloods get left behind."

Well, if that wealthy family could do it, so could Davos.  After all, what was his knack for if not to slip around obstacles that set themselves in his way.  Sidling around the crowds, Davos looked the barrier head on and walked straight through.

\--

The train ride had been odd, full of rich folks swanning about in long black robes that were much nicer than the secondhand robes Davos had purchased the week beforehand. The sweets he'd purchased had jumped as he unwrapped them, and the conversations he'd overheard were full of words he didn't know. It hasn't taken long to figure out that a muggle was what his parents were, normal folks, and it followed that he was a mudblood, as that seemed to be their offspring.  Quidditch was some sort of sport, he guessed, but as to what a quaffle was, well that was beyond him.

But if the train ride had been odd, the trip from the train to the castle was strangely soothing.  Thrust on a boat with another first year boy, Davos had enjoyed the way the little boat glided through the water.  Turning to his companion, Davos recognized him as the boy from the platform, the one being bullied by his brother, Stannis was his name, and he tried out a friendly smile.  "Davos," he said, offering up his hand to the kid, who looked as though he was avoiding being terrified by sheer force of will.

"You're a mudblood," the boy said by way of reply, and Davos nodded.  When he'd overhead the phrase on the train, it had rung like a slur between the ruby lips of a regal blonde, her hair glimmering bright as gold foil.  She'd called it at a passing boy, her legs draped over the lap of someone who could only be her twin, and they'd snickered cruelly, the blonde boy flicking his elbow at the whispered request of his sister, making the mudblood fall.

From Stannis it wasn't a slur, no, it wasn't really much of anything.  A flat descriptor, without weight or merit.  It merely was.

"Stannis," he said gruffly, hand firmly at his side, “Baratheon.”  Though he didn’t know what it meant, or who this kid was, there was no mistaking the air of importance that dragged from his surname.  With that, Stannis (Baratheon) turned away, his eyes set on the castle twinkling yellow in the moonless night.

\--

Davos didn’t know what to expect when they thrust the talking hat against his ears, but it certainly wasn’t a voice in his head.  The words shook in his skull.   _Loyal,_ it chortled, _fair, hardworking, but sly.  There’s only one place for you_ , “HUFFLEPUFF.”

He eyed Stannis Baratheon warily as he passed him, an empty seat waiting for him amongst the cheering folks in yellow and black.  The hat had taken much longer with Baratheon than it had with him, minutes had passed tersely until it had finally called out a bracing “SLYTHERIN,” and so there he sat, wedged between his black-haired brother and the blondes from the train, looking grim and uncomfortable.  Davos could see girl across the table with the unfortunate shadows of unbleached facial hair trying to make eyes at him, but Stannis was focused firmly on the podium at the front of the great hall.

As Davos sat, a middle-aged man, his face lined and hard, came to the front of the room, and began to speak.  His voice was low and deep, his body rigid.  Davos could see gray hair sprinkled in amongst the black.  Jon Arryn was the name he gave, their headmaster.  From his dry lips rumbled a diatribe on honor, and respect, and the importance of keeping oaths.

A rumble rolled through his belly, reminding Davos that it had been more than a few hours since he last ate, but before he could ask one of the nearby boys when the food will arrive, the nearest one let out a deep belly laugh.

“I heard that, mate,” he whispered, loud enough for half the table to hear,  “Don’t you worry, we’ll be fed soon.  I’m Salla.  Sallador San, but everyone calls me Salla.  I’m a third year.”

Davos found himself smiling in spite of himself.  This was the first truly friendly voice he’d heard all day, and he’d not realized how much he needed it until it came, ringing and welcome in his ears.  “Davos Seaworth.”

“You’re muggleborn, right?”

“Is that the same as being a mudblood?” Davos whispered back, earning a sharp glare from a girl three seats down.

“I see you’ve heard our betters talking then.  They call us that, but in polite company we say muggleborn.  Don’t worry about it, mate, we all make that mistake.  I’m a halfblood myself.  Mum’s good wizarding stock, dad’s something of a pirate.  Don’t worry, you’ll get the hang of it soon.”

A snicker from the table next to them drew Davos’s eyes back towards the blondes.  It was the girl laughing again, her brother’s lips at her ear.

“Lannisters,” Salla explained, as if that one word should give Davos any insight at all.  “Stay out of their way.  Jaime and Cersei, they’re fifth years.  The tall boy next to them is Robert Baratheon.”

“What’s so special about them?” Davos found himself asking, curiosity begging to be sated as much as his belly was begging for food.

“They’re the oldest, purest wizarding bloodlines.  Well, nearly.  They’re no Targaryens.”  Salla nodded at the boy at the end of the table, hair pale as ice, a head boy badge polished and bright on the front of his robe.  “Rhaegar Targaryen, head boy.  His dad’s the Minister of Magic.  Corrupt old bat.  Crazy, too, and a bit of a eugenicist.  Steer clear of that one.  He’s not a fanatic like his father, but he’s ice cold.  Next to him, that’s Jon Connington, and over there, the Martells, Oberyn and Elia.  Connington’s a decent enough fellow, I don’t know how he fell in with that lot, but he’s on Targaryen’s leash all right.”

Davos nodded.  “Who else should I avoid?”

Salla nodded at the Gryffindor table.  “Seventh year at the end with the dark hair and the wild eyes, that’s Brandon Stark.  He may be a Gryffindor, but he’s a bit of a bully.  That’s his brother next to him, another fifth year, Ned Stark.  He and Baratheon, they’re Arryn’s favorites. And next to him is his sister, Lyanna, she’s a fourth year.  Ned’s decent enough, a bit dry though, no sense of fun.”

As Salla talked, Davos eyed the dirt beneath his fingernails warily.  As different as this world seemed on the surface, the rules were the same.  Davos Seaworth was common as salt and onions, and he was proud of that.  Let the noble types fret about bloodlines, he was going to take advantage of the opportunities

\--

As it turned out, it didn’t take long for Davos to get used to Hogwarts.  Sure, the staircases moved of their own accord and the paintings were mouthy, but Davos had never been the easily startled type.  And school, well, it was school all the same.  History of magic was boring, Davos had never been a particularly prolific reader and the lessons were dry and dead as the ghost that taught them.  Charms was fine enough, but he’d no great ease with things that flitted and fluttered. For all that these plants were sentient, Herbology reminded Davos too much of home, and of the dirt at his father’s fingertips. Potions was difficult, too calculating for Davos’s taste, and Professor Pycelle’s simpering pandering to the purebloods irked.  Defense Against the Dark Arts was interesting at least, and Professor Selmy, the head of Gryffindor House, was regal as he was quick.

By far Davos’s favorite class was transfiguration, taught by the kind-eyed Professor Cressen.  It was a bit like disappearing, transfiguration was, and Davos always did have a talent for that.  For the most part Davos had succeeded in avoiding the purebloods outside of mealtime.  With the exception of Salla, who seemed to have decided to adopt him as his own little lost boy, Davos kept mostly to himself.

October was on its last legs, crawling towards November, when Professor Cressen called Davos into his office after class.  Seated already in a squat black armchair, looking stiff and wooden against the plush seat, was Stannis Baratheon.  Making himself at home in the second armchair, Davos looked up at Cressen with wide eyes.

“Stannis, I’ve noticed you’ve been struggling with your transfiguration work.  There seems to be a subtlety you’re not grasping.  As Davos is the best in the class, I’ve assigned him to tutor you for the time being.”

Stannis glared sullenly at Cressen.  “He’s a mudblood,” he said flatly, “and a _hufflepuff._ ”

“I’m not giving you a choice, Stannis.”

“Robert never had to be tutored by a mudblood.”

“You are not your brother, Stannis.  He’s always had a flair for such things.  But if you put in hard work and practice, I’m sure you’ll follow in his talented footsteps.”

Davos eyed Stannis warily.  He didn’t particularly want to tutor the Baratheon kid, but Cressen had been fair to him, and kind as well.  It was the least he could do.

“If you’re so worried about appearances,” Cressen was saying, “you may use my office.  Tomorrow, after lunch.  I’ll leave you to it.”

Stannis nodded gruffly and left without meeting Davos’s eyes.

\--

Davos flicked his wand idly between his calloused fingertips, his eyes set squarely on the door.  Stannis burst in, his palpable resentment permeating the air, just as the clock struck one.  It was the fifth time they’d met, and so far Stannis had given him nothing but one word responses, his expressions stony and grim as Davos tried to impart to him the subtle art of transfiguration.

“This is humiliating.  No Baratheon has ever been tutored by a mudblood,” he growled, pacing the chamber.  “Everything comes so easily for Robert.  Jon Arryn thinks he’s a genius.  He’s the star beater on the Quidditch team.  Even if I try out next year, they won’t let me on the team.  I have to work four times as hard for things that are just handed to Robert free of consequences.”

Davos stared.  It was the longest speech he’d ever heard from Stannis.

“You’re good at this, too, which isn’t fair.  I should be good at this.  I’m a Baratheon.  That means something.  Why should a mudblood get this, and not me?”

He meant to say something, interrupt this surprising tirade, explain that all he’d done was be born talented, that not everything was easy for him, that maybe his subtleties were repayment for being born without a silver spoon in his mouth.  But Davos held no resentment towards the Baratheon, no, his circumstances weren’t his fault anymore than Davos’s were his.  “Well, mate,” Davos said, flicking his wand idly through his fingers, “You’ve got power I can’t even dream of.  You think it’s easier, being a mudblood hufflepuff?”

Stannis sniffed, setting himself down on the desk with a heavy thump.  “The hat almost put me in hufflepuff.  I had to tell it, remind it, that I was a Baratheon, and that Baratheon’s had been slytherins for generations.  It told me I was the loyal sort.  It wasn’t until I told him I wanted what my brother wanted, I wanted my due, that it finally let me through.”

Davos couldn’t imagine arguing with a hat.  But then again, he wasn’t a pureblood, he didn’t know what it felt like to be under Stannis’s kind of pressure.  He didn’t like the other kid, not really, but a strange sort of understanding was blooming between them and he wasn’t really sure what to do with it.

“If you let me help you,” Davos somehow found himself saying, “I will.”  He saw no reason why not to.  Despite Stannis’s prejudices, he wasn’t the bad sort.

Stannis met his eyes, really and truly for the first time, and Davos felt a shiver run through him.  “I won’t thank you.  You’ve been ordered to help me anyway, so why should I?  And you’re still a mudblood.  I’m not going to start talking to you in the corridors or sitting with you at lunch.  But if you help me… I’ll keep you informed.  I’ll tell you who to avoid.  I’ll keep you out of sight of… _them._ ”

Davos nodded.  He appreciated the kid’s bluntness, there was justice to it, to what he was offering.  Help from Davos on his studies, and in return, Stannis would keep him out of the way of his crueler classmates: the Lannisters, the Targaryens.

“All right.”  Davos stuck out his hand stubbornly and Stannis looked at it with wary eyes.

A moment passed, and then another, until finally Stannis thrust out his hand to match.  His handshake was firm, and final, and Davos smiled.  “Alright then, let’s get to work.”


	2. Rumbles of Revolution

Days turned to weeks and weeks to years.  His friendship, if that’s what you could call it, with Stannis Baratheon was odd as ever.  Five years they’d been meeting in Cressen’s office, but oftentimes it felt more like a confessional than a study session.  Stannis Baratheon was blunt and loose-tongued, ever convinced the world was set against him.

For his part, Davos eased Stannis’s fears, corrected his course, but he served Stannis no lies, no false assurances.  Stannis was always fair with him from the start, laying his prejudices on the table along with his wants, and Davos respected that.

From tutor to confidant, that was Davos’s path.  Stannis was never kind, he never thanked him or doted on him, but their trust bloomed bright in the darkening world.

Did Stannis like him?  Some days Davos wasn’t really sure, but he found that he didn’t care.  Salla, who had graduated that past June, liked him enormously and exuberantly, but for all of his gilded promises of friendship there was little trust between them.  With Stannis, the truth was thick, bright, and obvious, and Davos preferred that to the veneer of false friendship.

But their partnership, for that’s the thing Davos chose to call it, was ever discreet.  Not a secret, no, Stannis Baratheon had few secrets.  Rather, it was easier for the first few years, when Robert was still around, and the Lannister twins, and Rhaegar Targaryen, that they stay out of sight.  And as time passed, they’d made a habit of talking privately, and habits were hard to break.

Which is why Davos was so surprised when the thick vellum envelope emblazoned with a black stag on a cloth of gold, came whooshing through his window.

It seemed that Cassana and Steffon Baratheon, Stannis’s aristocratic absentee parents, had died, and Davos was invited to the funeral.

Well.  That was new.

\---

“They’d been traveling in Africa, seeing the exotic wizarding communities of the Sahara Dessert, when their floo back home went wrong.” Stannis explained flatly.

“Some sort of accident had twisted their travel, and they’d been torn apart in the atmosphere.  Only their new manservant survived.”

Davos had seen him around the house before the funeral, a gruesome fellow by the name of Patchface, with a face covered in odd patchwork motley tattoos; evidently it was some sort of wizarding ritual from far off lands.  “Three days he’d spent in two places at once, his mind suffocated and stretched thin, until St. Mungos had managed to piece him back together.”

“You okay, mate?”

“Fine.  I don’t care.  They never loved me, anyway.  So why should I have loved them?”

“They were your parents, it’s okay to be upset.”

“Well I’m not.”

“That’s okay, too.”

\--

The funeral was awkward, full of quiet faces and barely concealed disdain.  For all that their lineage was pure as the driven snow, it appeared that to their contemporaries, Cassana and Steffon were a bit of a joke.  Eccentrics, they were, who traveled too often and cared far too little about the rabble their sons associated themselves with.  Stannis with his mudblood friend, Robert with his muggle-sympathizing ones, it was hard for the elitist pureblood families to decide which was worse.

“Disgraceful,” Davos overhead a man say, bald but for two stripes of thick blonde hair adorning his cheek from ear to chin, “Neither of you will consort with such lower beasts.”  Davos spotted the Lannister twins behind him, the girl nodding eagerly at the man who could only be her father, her eyes rapt while her brother stared at her.  There was something off in his stare, something… hungry.  Davos shook his head as a slimy feeling crawled its way up his spine.

He could see the spires of a three-headed dragon roaring from Lord Tywin Lannister’s wrist, and Davos felt a shiver run through him.  He knew that symbol, it was the Targaryen symbol.  Recently, the _Prophet_ reported that symbol burned into the chests of dead muggles, muggles killed by the killing curse, muggles whose only crime was being born without magic.

“Mudblood,” Cersei Lannister hissed as he passed, the rug sliding under him so he had to stumble to keep his balance.

That was fine, words were nothing he couldn’t shake.  It’s not as though he didn’t know what the pureblood crowd thought of him.

But words turned to hissed hexes, and as proficient as Davos was at _protego_ , he didn’t have eyes everywhere.  His third accidental nosebleed is when he began to become angry.  Robert, the eldest Baratheon, started chortling as the blood dripped down his chin, staining his already stained dress robes with streaks of red and brown.

That’s when Davos did it.  Head down, eyes on the floor, he shuffled away from the laughing purebloods and grabbed the first gold thing he saw off the mantle.  Shoving it in his pocket, he felt it spark and grumble beneath his fingertips, but it stayed there all the same.

\--

“He’s getting married,” Stannis said gloomily, as Davos hoisted himself up on the countertop of Storm’s End, the ancestral Baratheon home.  Somewhere in the distance, a black haired child was crying, Stannis’s kid brother, Cassandra and Steffon’s other parting gift. 

“To that Stark girl.  Now he really will be Ned Stark’s brother.  Just what he always wanted.”

The he in question was Robert, of course.  Most of Stannis’s grievances had to do with Robert.  Davos never had to guess what Stannis was thinking, never had to try.  Whatever it was he felt, whatever he wanted, whatever was denied to him, he shared grudgingly with Davos, firewhiskey burning at the back of their throats.

“And Brandon Stark’s marrying one of the Tullys.  The older one.  The pretty one.”  Davos knew who he was talking about.  The Tullys were one of the rare pureblooded hufflepuff houses, and Catelyn Tully was certainly a stunner.  With long auburn hair and bright blue eyes, she had half his house mooning after her, not to mention some of the other houses as well.

“Apparently that wormy fourth year, Petyr Baelish, you know the one, tiny sycophant who’s always following around the Starks, he challenged Brandon Stark, a full fledged adult wizard, to a duel for her hand.  You can guess how that turned out.  Baelish is in St. Mungo’s with a scar from shoulder to hip, and Brandon Stark is still marrying the Tully girl.”

“And you, Stannis, do you want to get married?”

“Eventually I must.  Sixteen seems a bit young, even for my family, but it would be expected.  Carry on the pureblood lineage.”

“That sounds awfully grim, mate.  Don’t you want to have a bit of passion, fall in love?”

“No one’s ever loved me.  Doubtful anyone will.  Cassana and Steffon’s last letter home said as much.  They said they were going to find someone who would finally make me laugh. I would laugh.  If someone told me something funny.  If someone tried to make me laugh, I could laugh.”

Davos smiled at that.  He’d tried before, of course he had, but he wasn’t going to point that out now.

“I’m seeing someone,” he said casually, conversationally, by way of changing the subject.  “Her name’s Marya, she’s from my village.”

“A muggle.”  Stannis shook his head.  “You shouldn’t date muggles, it’s below your station.”

“I was a muggle, once.” 

And Stannis shook his head again.  “You thought you were, that’s different.  Break up with her.  You may be a mudblood, but you should marry another mudblood, keep the wizarding population growing.  It’s your duty, same as it is mine.  Though I doubt I’ll make a match as good as Robert’s.  Only the best for him, of course.”

Davos held back a groan.  There was no use arguing with Stannis when he got like this, caught up in the wake of his wants, in the things his brother’s said to him, the things he got that Stannis was denied.  “Whatever you say, mate.”

\--

The summer before his seventh year at Hogwarts, that’s when Davos started stealing.  It was right after the funeral, when he’d seen how easy it was to slip past pureblood defenses.  The stag he’d pocketed sat glaring on his dresser, gilded horns giving off occasional sparks.

That had been an accident of sorts, a rare moment of passion, but this?  This could be a career.  He slipped in under the cover of night in a suit of his own making, black robes, transfigured from smuggler’s sails, with every anti-detection spell he could think of.  Almost as good as a real invisibility cloak, they were.

He took small things, but valuable ones, and sold them to a place on Knockturn Alley, a place that Salla had told him about years ago, where they accepted any pawned item, no questions asked.  With the money he was making, his father could maybe afford to stop working, something Davos worried about when he heard his father’s spine creak each morning.

But it would have to stop come September, when he had to return to school.

Still, it was something.

\--

The more homes he stole into, the more he saw of that symbol, the three-headed dragon, all in black, swallowed by scarlet flames.  Carved into wood and swept away in the ash, on portraits and in the molding, the Targaryens made their mark.

It ought to have worried Davos, he knew what it stood for, what it meant for him, but it didn’t.  His place was in the shadows; away from the fire-bright, the clean scourge of the dragon’s breath.

It was just a symbol, he knew that, but symbols had meaning, and this one threatened to stop his breath for the crime of his birth, and it unsettled him.  It was unnatural, truly.  Davos preferred his Christian god; his village’s church was small but homey, its flock loved to squawk along to hymns and psalms each Sunday morning.  For his part, Davos always loved mosaics.  They were nothing grand, small windows dappled in bright colors, letting in a kaleidoscope gloom.  On one was the mother, the baby Jesus at her breast, on another Mary Magdalene sprawled weeping over his fallen corpse.  Those were the icons he knew, the ones he trusted.

The dragon, though it burned bright and black and cruel, was nothing more than a lie.  A lie that grew in the embers, and like fire, threatened to consume him, but Davos was quick and lithe and dark, and beneath his sea-forged cloak, they flames could only lick around him.

So long as he was unseen, he was safe.

 

\--

It was supposed to be a simple job, slip in, copy the formula from the famous Targaryen grimoire, the one passed down from those who were wizards in Camelot before they were conquered by the Romans and forced to flee, the one that contained their deadliest secrets, and slip back out.  No one was supposed to be home, the Rhaegar Targaryen should have been off on his honeymoon with his wealthy bride, but that was the thing about wizards, especially dark wizards, they were never where they were supposed to be.  Davos shouldn't have counted on wedded bliss to keep Targaryen away.

He’d just found the book, but hadn’t slipped his way in past the protection charms and jinxes to steal a glance at its inner sanctum and borrow its secrets when he heard the quiet gasp of air and the soft pad of footsteps.

Slipping into a closet, he drew his cloak around him and the book both and offered off a quick prayer to whomever was listening that he wouldn't be found.  Given the family's reputation for dealing with crimeless muggles and muggle-born wizards, he wasn't quite sure what Rhaegar Targaryen would do with one who stole his family's magical secrets, but he didn't particularly want to find out.

"Jon I need to hear the prophecy again," he was saying, voice smooth as summer silk, "and now's the perfect time.  With father away, no one in the ministry will stop me.  Just, go back.  Keep my bride's brother busy."

There was a shuffle of feet against the wood and a resigned sigh. "He won't be happy that you're gone.  Very protective of his sister, that one is."

"I don't really care what Oberyn thinks.  Elia knows.  Elia understands.  The important thing is the prophecy."

More footsteps, and they were coming closer.  Davos held his breath.

"Rhaegar-"

"Are you not sworn to me Jon?" There was the trademark haughtiness Davos recognized, "do you not wear my mark?"  He paused, and Davos could only imagine Jon (Connington, he presumed) nodding in the darkness.  "Then go."  There were two cracks, one loud as a firecracker, one soft as a ribbon in the breeze, then their footsteps stopped.

Davos waited five minutes, then ten, as his heart slowed.  Then he left the way he came.  A million questions bubbled in his belly, but he tucked them away, just grateful to have escaped.  Let greater men play their games, Davos had his job, his girlfriend, his life.  As long as they didn't bother him, he wouldn't bother with them.

It wasn’t until he was back in his home that he realized he still held the spellbook to his breast.  He couldn’t put it back, he didn’t want to risk that this time, Targaryen or his companion would be there waiting for him.  Instead, he wrapped it back in his cloak, and buried under the hearth, beneath stone and ash.

\--

It was odd, how rare things, things with great value always seemed to collect dust.  Wizards and humans alike kept their precious items behind flimsy glass where they gathered dust until Davos saw fit to release them from their mausoleums.  He collected an assortment of curiosities, all sold for a tidy profit in Knockturn Alley, and kept clear of the dragon’s sight.  As for the symbol, the more he saw of it, the more he hated it.  Unnatural, it was, and cruel.

And yet he did nothing.  Kept his head down, kept well out of sight.  He could feel the frustration boiling around him, when he saw fit to be sociable that is.  Even Salla had brushed his head through flames, whispering his dissatisfaction amongst the coals as Davos fed him olives and grapes.  It seemed these days, Salla could not get a pure blooded wizard to pay what was owed him, and that was unforgivable.

Injustice being what it was, Davos couldn’t claim surprise.  But he couldn’t pretend he was fighting it, either.  These wars were for greater men, and who was he?  Just Davos Seaworth, student and part time thief, who saved his galleons to save his father’s back, and buried them to pave his own future.

Let those men fight their battles, and Davos would continue his work.  He could not pretend to hope for the sort of riches Stannis Baratheon took for granted, but he could try to purchase security at least.  He could not protect them from the cruelty of the world, but he could provide for them.  He could give them comforts.  He could keep them hidden from the dragon’s threefold grasp.


End file.
